The Future of Your Cellphone on Google's Android: Buzzword

Googles open-source mobile software enters a mess of carrier lockdown. Could this be the end of contract hell, or it just hype? In his biweekly trends column, PMs senior tech editor looks into the crystal balland finds out youll be happy either way.

Details are sketchy about what to expect from Android, but one thing's for sure: The hardware won't look anything like photos of the so-called "gPhone" that have been circulating around the Internet since the rumor mill got fired up a year ago. (Rumor sites are very good at getting hold of half the truth, and terrible with the rest of it.) Google stated that it has no intention of manufacturing or designing hardware--at least not at first. Instead, the Web giant's development team is producing an open-source, Linux-based operating system that will be provided free of charge on future handsets. And next week, a software developers' kit (SDK) will hit the masses, to encourage software innovation and ensure a healthy allotment of applications for Android phones when they first start rolling out later next year.

Ultimately, a Google mobile operating system has the potential to be far more revolutionary than a Google phone. Despite the fact that the cellphone industry is a mature one, it has never settled on a standard OS--or even two or three, the way that the PC industry did. Say what you will about the evil hegemony of Microsoft, but the company's dominance of the PC operating system market in the 80s and 90s allowed software programmers to write code that was universally applicable.

Now, not only are there multiple OS's in the cellular industry (Symbian, Windows Mobile, Palm OS, Apple OS X for iPhone, and Blackberry OS), each OS is usually tuned by the carriers (Verizon Mobile, T-Mobile, AT&T and Sprint) for each phone. In fact, carriers often detune the capabilities of phones that could jeopardize services they want to sell--music and video streaming, GPS navigation, messaging, etc. The carriers get away with this because, by subsidizing phones in exchange for contract requirements on customers, they are often the only sales channels handset that makers have available. And carriers will often "lock" phones into their networks, rendering the devices useless if you switch services--and guaranteeing exclusivity arrangements on the handsets (the hacking and relocking of the iPhone to AT&T's network has become a neverending battle between the iPhone dev team and Apple). This has loosened somewhat of late. Companies such as Nokia have pushed some of their higher-end phones onto the unlocked market, but the carriers are still holding most of the cards when it comes to what hardware and software is available to consumers.

Into this tangled mess comes Android and the Open Handset Alliance with a Linux-based, open-source OS for phones. Notably absent from this alliance, however, are the two largest cellular carriers--AT&T and Verizon Wireless--as well as handset makers such as Nokia, Research In Motion, Apple, Palm and Sony Ericsson, many of whom have a vested interest in operating systems of their own. Plus, as Nokia company reps whom I recently spoke with were quick to point out, Android isn't the only open mobile OS: Symbian has an open SDK, and Apple has promised to launch an SDK for the iPhone as well--the upcoming Openmoko initiative promises a GNU/Linux phone that is almost entirely dependant on the software development efforts of the open-source community.

So Android is by no means a slam-dunk as a category-dominating OS standard, but it throws down the gauntlet to start a few much-needed brawls in the cellular industry. Google estimates that the operating system amounts to 10 percent of the total cost of a phone, so a free OS combined with falling hardware prices could eventually result in multifunction handsets that are cheap enough to do an end run around carrier subsidies. This could potentially mean a fertile unlocked handset market.

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But what's got to be really scaring the carriers right now is the prospect of thousands of freely available applications that could subvert almost every communications product they sell. Why subscribe to Sprint's GPS mapping service when you can simply download a free one that taps into Google Maps? Why pay for text messages to your friends when you can download an instant messaging client? In fact, why pay for cellular minutes at all when you can download Skype and just use your data plan? This sort of functionality has been creeping onto cellphones for years as they have become more and more like tiny computers. But OS's such as Android threaten carriers with a loss of control over the applications on the phones on their network. And they may find themselves becoming nothing more than wireless Internet service providers, forced to compete on price and bandwidth (another brewing battle, by the way, with Sprint's WiMAX rollout next year).

Regardless of what happens, it is going to be good for consumers. If things shake out in the best possible way, we could end up with cheap, highly-functional, customizable, Internet-enabled handsets that work across multiple carriers with no long-term contract requirements. With a free, constantly evolving and updatable operating system, it could be future-proof by design. So the cell phone in an Android world would be at once cheaper and less disposable than the giveaway phones we've been settling for in the United States for years.

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